The annual Folsom Street Fair in San Francisco is noted for its unbridled embrace of every kinky star in our sexual constellation. Even the fearless leather community that founded the event can sometimes appear tame amidst the outlandish costumes and clothing – and lack thereof – on display along the city’s tilted streets. In the [...]

Anne-christine d'Adesky in her element, at a San Francisco protest. (Photo: Juno Rosenhaus) Anne-christine d’Adesky got arrested, accidentally, long before it happened on purpose during AIDS protests. The Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist was covering civil disobedience at a nuclear facility in 1982 when she was approached by a suspicious policeman. Despite assuring him that [...]

It is coursing through our veins, sustaining life and fighting disease, and yet we fear it. The sight of a few drops can make an adult faint. A bucket of it in a movie is the very definition of horror. Even as Donald Trump contributes his perverted, sexist new layer of blood revulsion (through a [...]

Detail from Rotimi Fani-Kayode's "Untitled," courtesy of Autograph, London In thirty years of HIV work alongside black advocates, I have rarely written on the topic of race. It makes me uncomfortable, or perhaps I feel unequipped, unqualified. But it’s that very hesitancy, according to black gay academic Charles Stephens, that only makes racism [...]

Patrick Mutch, the sunny and earnest new CEO of Chase Brexton Health Care in Baltimore, does not mind addressing the elephant in the room. In his first interview with My Fabulous Disease since being hired after a tumultuous year for the agency, he got right to the point. “We’re changing the culture here,” Mutch promised, [...]

Leo Forte, Chris Hanner, and Rock Evans in a scene from the video series "The PrEP Project." “PrEP is a prevention strategy that deals with sex, namely bareback sex,” says gay film student Chris Tipton-King, “and I got tired of people tip-toeing around that fact.” The young Bay Area resident had never seen a PrEP [...]

No Justice No Pride protestors blocking the Capital Pride Parade. (Photo: Dylan Comstock) Hell hath no fury like a privileged white gay man who has waited too long for the next pride parade contingent to sashay by. When #NoJusticeNoPride blocked the DC Pride parade route on June 10, causing an hour delay to an already [...]

(Sean McKenna, as part of a portrait series by photographer David Meanix.) Last December I attended the most moving, transcendent World AIDS Day program I have witnessed in years. That’s not saying much, of course. These evenings are usually well-meaning but maudlin, featuring tearful eulogies while we hold up candles that drip on our fingers and [...]

Project Inform Program Manager Emily Mariko-Sanders acts up. Throughout the earliest years of the HIV/AIDS crisis, I deeply admired the fierce intellect of the late Martin Delaney, the researcher and advocate who, among many other historic accomplishments, founded Project Inform, the HIV treatment advocacy group with intimate ties to the community. What I [...]

Bruce Richman of Prevention Access Campaign, in 2002. I know. You're welcome. My friend Charles Sanchez is the creator of the musical web series Merce, about an HIV positive New Yorker. But enough about him. Charles and I constantly argue about which one of us has spoken to Bruce Richman most recently, and [...]